Returning to Haunt Us
by QueenMegaera
Summary: Rumours prequel/Standalone. During Uther's illness, the knights ride out to investigate rumours of hauntings near one of the northern villages. They're not ready for what - or who - they found. Rated T for slight gore and my paranoia.
1. Returning to Haunt Us

_A/N: By now, this is more of a post-Halloween special than a Halloween special, but then again I don't think it's as scary as I originally intended either._

_This takes place after the third series of the show, and before my "Rumours-series". It should also work as a standalone adventure. One-shot._

P.S. 10th of November. Edited, and with a new ending.

* * *

Returning to Haunt Us

"Ghosts?" Arthur said, his scepticism clearly written on his face.

"That's what the villagers said, sire," Leon replied. "There have been several incidents, and one family has already left the village. I'm afraid panic will break out if we don't do anything."

Arthur sighed and turned to look at Uther, who hadn't stirred in his chair since Leon entered the room. The King stared out through the window. Leon doubted he'd heard a word they'd said.

"Very well," Arthur said. "I could use a fool's errand right now. Make arrangements for us to leave in the morning. We'll leave Lancelot in charge here. How many knights will we need to fight ghosts, do you think?"

Leon ignored the bitterness in his lord's voice with practiced ease.

"Five men should be enough, sire," he said.

Arthur nodded and sent him on his way.

)YÔY(

The following morning, Leon, Elyan, Bors, William and Ewan rode behind Arthur - and, as always, Merlin - through the gates of the city and off to the north.

The ride to the village took hours. Leon busied himself studying the prince and his manservant. Arthur laughed at something Merlin said, and Merlin shook his head in a gesture of defeat or perhaps just disbelief. Not for the first time, Leon wondered if it was Arthur or Merlin himself who insisted that Merlin should come along on each of these little quests, and not for the first time he wondered if he was truly the only one who found it odd or if each knight had, in the privacy of his own mind, made up his own explanation for the irregularity. If the latter was the case, he wondered how many of them saw what he saw: the warmth in Arthur's eyes, the lingering glances, the smiles. He wondered if Arthur was aware of it himself.

)YÔY(

The village was a collection of drab little houses, so low that no man or woman could possibly stand straight in them. To the east, farmland stretched out down to a small river, only to revert to bushy, wild vegetation on the other side. To the west, there were only a few hundred yards of open land before the ancient trees of the Darkling Woods rose up, looming over the village with their branches outstretched like long, crooked arms with spidery fingers, waiting to grab the people who lived there if they dared come within reach.

When they rode into what could only with very, very good imagination be called the main street of the village, people left their chores, came out of their houses, and ran up to them. Leon looked down at the cluster of pale faces that lit up with relief to see the knights of Camelot.

A wrinkled woman leaning on a cane, who Leon recognised as the village elder who had asked his passing patrol to get them this help, approached Arthur as the prince got off his horse.

"Your Highness," she said. "We're grateful that you've taken the trouble to come here in our time of need."

"It's my duty to help my people whenever I can," Arthur replied gracefully."Though I admit, I'm used to do battle with foes of flesh and blood, rather than the ... mystical kind Leon says you've been experiencing."

A shadow passed over the old woman's face, making it resemble a mask of badly crumpled leather even more than it already did. Perhaps she suspected Arthur of not believing their stories. If so, she was probably right.

"Oh," she said, "they're flesh and blood, right enough, Your Highness. They just aren't alive."

Merlin, appearing behind his master, frowned.

"What do you mean?"

The woman turned to him.

"It's the dead, young man. They won't rest. And why should they, what with how they were sent out of this world?" Leon caught several of the men of the village turn their heads, either to stare at the ground or to glare at their matriarch when she couldn't see them. "But now they rise up to attack anyone who comes near the place," the woman continued, "innocent and guilty alike. The travelling tradesmen won't come to the village anymore, because the site is so close to the road, and parents won't let their children out of the house even to help on the fields, and no one dares to take even one step into the woods anymore. It can't go on, if we're to remain here."

"I only heard that people in your village had been attacked by ghouls in the woods," Arthur said. "No one said anything about the apparitions having a motive."

His face had taken on the expressionless look that Leon knew meant he was undecided about what to do or believe about something, and wanted to hear more before he gave his doubts away.

The old lady peered up at the prince, completely undeterred and perhaps a bit annoyed.

"I told you, my lord, they're no apparitions. They're real enough. But let us give you and your men food - you must be hungry - and we'll tell you all about it."

)YÔY(

The matriarch's house was not big enough even for their small group, and so food was brought out to the knights while Arthur, for courtesy's sake, accepted the invitation and went inside - followed, of course, by Merlin. It seemed, however, that the old lady's tales lasted far longer than her food, and the knights grew restless.

Leon caught the attention of one of the men of the village.

"Could you perhaps show us where these strange events have taken place, while we wait for the prince?" he asked, but the man merely stared in horror at Leon, shook his head in silence and hurried away. Wise from this lesson, Leon grabbed the arm of the next man who passed by - one of the ones he'd caught glaring at before - and promised him he would only have to give them the general direction, not walk all the way up to the place. Reluctantly, the man agreed.

)YÔY(

Their guide began to shiver as soon as they stepped into the shadow of the Darkling Woods, but led them on in among the trees. It was colder here, where the spring sun only reaced through the foilage in pinpoint rays, and soon not even that. The sounds from the village seemed to dim faster than they should, and when they were gone the knights heard nothing but the sound of their own feet on last year's leaves and the occasional rustling noise in the treetops above.

"When your elder woman was talking, it sounded as if something else had happened here," Leon said when the man from the village had still not said a word.

"We did what we had to," the man grumbled. He didn't look at Leon or at any of them when he spoke: "They're like vermin. They don't look like they could do much damage, but they spread sorcery and misery everywhere they go. They're destroying our lives even from the other side of the grave, aren't they? Imagine what they would have done if we'd let them live here."

A chill crawled down Leon's spine as he began to suspect what kind of tragedy had been played out here.

"Who are 'they'?" Elyan asked warily, but before the man could answer they all came to a halt. The temperature had dropped noticeably in a matter of seconds. It had been a reasonably warm day, with only a few white clouds overhead. Now Leon could see his own breath. Ahead, he noticed a clearing.

"They're here," the man whispered. "We came to close." He couldn't have sounded more terrified if he'd said he was staring his own death in the face. Maybe he believed he was.

Next to him, Leon heard Bors and Ewan draw their swords. On his other side their guide took a step backwards and Elyan grabbed the hilt of his sword. Something rustled in the undergrowth ahead.

"Hello?" Elyan called.

Sir Ewan hushed him, something Leon had never thought he'd do to an older knight, but fear apparently made him forget himself. The villager merely gave a squeak, turned and fled. Leon shouted after him:

"Warn the prince!"

The man didn't reply, but for a second he looked over his shoulder and met Leon's eyes, and Leon knew he had heard him.

"What should we do, Sir?" Sir William asked, looking at Leon.

Leon cursed under his breath. He had wanted directions and some more facts, not a fight. He felt stupid, now, not to have waited for Arthur. But they were knights of Camelot. They couldn't turn and run. It just wasn't done.

"We stand our ground, whatever happens," Leon replied, and stepped forward.

)YÔY(

They stopped just outside the clearing and took in the scene that lay before them. There had been a camp there. Between trees so thick it would take three men to reach around them, the remains of several tents and a couple of fireplaces were still scattered on the ground, trampled into the mud and the leaves - and the dried blood. Strips of cloths hung from pieces of string that might once have formed a circle around the clearing, but now what remained of the boundary hung limply from the treetrunks it had been tied to.

"Druids!" Bors spat.

Elyan glared at him. "Seems the villagers held them in about as high esteem as you do," he said.

"You think the villagers did this?" Ewan asked.

"Considering what our guide said," Leon reminded him, "I think that's the only conclusion."

The blood that remained on the ground and on the tents told a story that was clear enough, as did the sharp smell of decay, but there was something missing from the picture ...

"But how long ago?" Elyan said. "Do you think there could be survivors? I swear I saw something move ..." He headed into the clearing.

"Hang on, what attacked the villa..."

William didn't finish his sentence. Instead he gawped at the creatures that came out of the shadows and from behind the trees as soon as Elyan stepped into the broken ring of string and cloth.

"Flesh and blood," Leon whispered, and drew his sword.

They had been, and indeed they still were. In the strictest sense. Flesh was still attached to bone, and there was certainly blood - but there was no life left in the bodies that approached, not just from the clearing, Leon noticed to his chagrin, but from behind as well. And yet, they walked. The corpses walked. Skin that had turned black with putrefaction hung from gaping wounds, empty eye-sockets stared at them, but the creatures seemed not to notice their pitiful state. They moved as smoothly and swiftly as if they had still been alive. There wasn't much more than tatters left of their clothes, but enough remained, along with the occasional glimpse of a marking on skin or a piece of jewelry that had all but melted into the flesh beneath, that there was no doubt - these were the druids. There were at least thirty of them, perhaps more, Leon didn't have time to count. Some looked to have been women. Some had quite obviously - the gods have mercy on them - been children.

Leon put one arm over his mouth and nose to keep out the worst of that horrid stench, and drew his sword with the other. The things had no weapons, but neither had they any fear of putting their arms or their necks within sword's range, clawing at the knights. Even as he struck his first blow, Leon wondered what good it would do against an opponent that was already dead, unless he could cut clear through the body and at least diminish its size. His blade wasn't good enough, but even so he found himself wondering for the briefest of moments - as he at least managed to sever a rotting arm - if cutting one of these things apart would stop them, or if the arms and the legs would crawl on in separate directions. The image that presented itself in Leon's mind made him want to be sick.

"Gods, the smell!" Ewan cried out in wild desperation behind him, clearly feeling much the same.

Leon noted that however swift, these undead opponents didn't seem to posses any particular skill for fighting. He also noticed that whenever he was attacked, the creatures surrounding William ahead of him became slower, as if the things could only concentrate on one target at once - as if they shared the same mind, unable to focus on all of them at once.

As the corpses around him fell into just such a slump, Leon heard Elyan shout:

"Hey! You there!"

He dared to glance away in that direction, and saw Elyan struggling to get past the remains of two women, his stare locked on a bulging tree trunk that split about seven feet up - and seemed hollow.

"There's a boy in there!" Elyan called. "Hey! Boy! We're here to help!"

And then Leon saw it too: the mudstreaked face of a boy, hiding in the hollow of the tree. He had black, messy hair that had grown down to his shoulders, and along with the black and brown rags he wore it made him look like some kind of creature of the woods. Leon wasn't surprised he had been hard to spot.

The boy peered back at Elyan with eyes the pale blue colour of ice being held up to the light. It seemed Elyan had chosen the wrong thing to say. All the creatures around him attacked as one, lifted him up and hurled him with inhuman strength across the clearing, and then ...

The boy didn't speak. He didn't even blink. But the dead stopped moving for a moment, throwing the clearing into silence again - and then, slowly but in unison, with decaying vocal chords and rotting lips, they spoke:

_"Leav-v-ve usss alooone."_

It chilled Leon to the bone. He froze on the spot, and he could well believe the creatures would have been able to pry the sword from his hands and run him through with it, if another sound hadn't caught his attention.

)YÔY(

From the direction of the village, they heard the sound of horse hooves galloping over dry leaves and fallen branches, and then Arthur was there. He charged from the shadows into sunlit clearing, and as he did the sunshine reflected in his armour and his sword and lit up his red mantle so that it almost looked as if he'd caught fire.

Leon watched the boy in the tree flinch and saw his eyes widen and flicker with a strange golden light. In an instant all the_ things_ that had been attacking the knights either fell to the ground or turned around to face Arthur. They moved like wolves on two legs, and they had the prince surrounded.

Leon was about to call out and charge at the dead flesh, when the temperature took another dive, and the creatures all stopped, frozen in their positions like the maids would do in their strange parlour games. Again, Leon's eyes were drawn to the boy.

It was him, wasn't it? The boy was the one pulling the strings of these horrific puppets. There was no haunting - only_ magic_.

But now the boy wasn't staring at Arthur anymore. His mouth had fallen open, behind the mud his face had paled more than Leon had ever thought possible in the living, and his glaced-over eyes stared at something behind Leon's shoulder. Struck by a mysterious sense of dread, Leon spun around, and saw ...

Merlin. He'd followed the prince on his own horse, and in the commotion none of them had noticed his arrival. Merlin stared back at the boy in the tree, and the expression on his face mirrored the boy's, to an uncanny degree: the open mouth, the wide eyes, the pallor, the hint of horror ... or was that something else?

The sickening sound of a score of rotten corpses hitting the ground at the same time made Leon turn back around, only to see that their attackers had all fallen to the ground and lay as motionless as they should be, and the boy in the tree was gone. For a brief moment, Leon thought he spotted a tattered brown figure running off into the shadows of the Darkling Woods, and then it was gone. Half a minute later, he was already asking himself what it was he had seen in the first place.

)YÔY(

"Whose brilliant idea was it to charge off on your own?" Arthur yelled before he swung himself off the horse. Leon saw the fury in his face and braced himself.

"It was me, sire."

Arthur looked surprised.

"You?"

"I thought we'd take a look at the area. I wasn't intending for us to go to the scene itself, and I didn't expect us to encounter the ... those things. I'm sorry, it was foolish."

The anger seemed to drain away from Arthur.

"Never mind. They've stopped walking around now. What happened?"

"There was a boy in that tree, sire," Elyan said, pointing. "It almost seemed like he was ... I think it must have been magic, sire. It seemed as if he was controlling them. Like puppets."

Arthur frowned and walked over to the tree.

"A druid boy?" he asked.

"Most likely," Leon said.

"He must have been hiding here since it happened," Elyan said, staring at the corpses that now lay quietly on the ground. "Poor creature."

"Where did he go?" Arthur asked. "You didn't ..."

"He ran away when you turned up," Leon hurried to interrupt. "He seemed to be scared by ..." Leon turned to look at Merlin again but felt his voice falter when Merlin stared hard at him and shook his head. "... by your arrival, sire," Leon finished weakly, turning back to Arthur who stopped studying the hollow tree and turned to look into the dark shadows of the woods.

They were all silent for a while, and then Arthur asked:

"What are the chances for a child to survive in there, do you think?"

Leon didn't know what to say, but behind him Merlin replied:

"I'm sure he's already learnt how to survive."

"Let's hope," Arthur murmured.

It was probably just Leon's ears playing tricks on him, but he thought he heard Merlin whisper:

"Let's hope not."

* * *

THE END


	2. Note: Additional ending

New ending! Note from author:

Hello, readers. I was a bit unsure about whether I had left this story a bit _too_ open ended - and considering several of you followed it, so were you! So I changed a few words, corrected a few typos, and then I added a paragraph at the end. Now I feel the story is complete. So, if you were waiting for more, you can go back to the story and there's at least a little bit more than there was 24 hours ago.

I hope I'll be able to start publishing something that _isn't_ a one-shot before Christmas.

Love, Queen M.

(I'll take this message down in a couple of days to avoid confusion.)


End file.
